The University of Arizona's LUNAR AND PLANETARY LABORATORY Its Founding and Early Years Ewen A. Whitaker Set in Varityper Times Roman and printed at the University of Arizona Printing-Reproductions Department Equal Employment Opportunity· Affirmative Action Employer CONTENTS THE PRE-TUCSON ERA Historical background ........................................ I Enter Gerard P. Kuiper ....................................... 2 The Moon enters the picture ................................... 3 A call for suggestions ......................................... 5 The Harold Urey affair ....................................... 6 Preliminaries for the Lunar Atlas ............................... 7 1957 - a dream begins to take shape ............................. 7 The shot that was seen (and heard) around the world ............... 8 Other irons in the fire ......................................... 9 Kuiper seeks full-time help for the Lunar Project .................. 9 1959 - the Lunar Project gathers momentum ..................... 11 A new factor in the Lunar Project LPL story ................... 12 The Air Force enters the lunar cartography business ............... 13 The Lunar Atlas published at last .............................. 14 Big problems with the Yerkes set-up ............................ : 6 The southwestern U.S. begins to beckon ........................ 17 "There is a tide in the affairs of men ..." ....................... 18 Preparing for the move ...................................... 23 THE TUCSON ERA The Lunar Project makes the transfer .......................... 25 The LPLIAP gears up for action .............................. 27 New programs and new faces ................................. 28 Five more years of expansion ................................. 32 LPL growth in other directions and areas: ....................... 37 a} Telescopes and site testing ............................. 37 LPL obtains a good site for its telescopes ................ 38 Other sites in the Catalinas ............................ 40 The showpieces ...................................... 40 Site II and metal mirrors .............................. 42 Other site-testing programs ............................ 43 Kuiper receives a rebuff ............................... 46 b) Involvement in NASA missions: The Ranger program ................................. 47 The Surveyor program ............................... 50 Pioneers 10 and 11 ................................... 50 Other NASA missions ................................ 51 c) Lunar programs ..................................... 51 d) Polarization programs ................................ 54 e) Planetary atmospheres; 1-R programs from aircraft ........ 54 f) Planetary photography; comets; satellites ................ 56 g) Stellar photometry ................................... 57 h) Editorial; publications ................................ 59 i) Teaching ........................................... 60 j) Construction; shops; design; maintenance ................ 60 k) Office; secretaries; library ............................. 60 Gerard P. Kuiper; the man ................................... 61 Postscript ................................................. 69 Appendix ................................................. 70 FOREWORD The Centennial Year of this University also marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, the oldest and largest estab­ lishment of its kind in this or, indeed, any country. To document its complete history and achievements over that period would involve much research, and such a production would be beyond the scope and intent of this article in any case. What I will attempt to do here, therefore, is to trace the events and circumstances that led to the founding of LPL in Tucson, to pick out some of the highlights and other memorabilia of those earlier years, and to intersperse this material with personal anecdotes and reminiscences. At this point, all the reader needs to know is that the LPL was founded in 1960 by Dr. Gerard P. Kuiper, an outstanding and dynamic Dutch-born astronomer who, after making many noteworthy contributions to stellar astron­ omy, turned to the then largely disdained area of the study of the planets and satellites of our Solar System. My only qualifications for preparing this account are that my association with Dr. Kuiper dates back to 1955 when we first met at an international astronomical convention, and that my full-time collaboration with him started in 1958, predating by three years any other current member of LPL I cannot claim to be either a historian or a writer; although I will draw upon various letters, documents and other sources for data, opinions, reminiscences, etc., the narrative will undoubtedly be biased by my own experiences from these thirty years. The full story awaits a dedicated biographer or historian who has the time available to go through the voluminous correspondence and related documents and items of the Kuiper Archive. Ewen A. Whitaker Associate Research Scientist in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory Member of the Kuiper Archive Committee THE PRE-TUCSON ERA Historical Background Just three years before the founding of this University, a comparatively insignificant event occurred in South Africa that, within a period of a decade or two, changed the entire emphasis in astronomical research. Exactly seventy-five years later, another rather more significant event was destined to reverse this change, thereby largely restoring the earlier priorities. As we shall see, these two disparate and apparently unconnected events provided the ideal astronomical climate to give an unexpected boost to a modest astronomical project that had just been initiated in southern Wisconsin. They also contributed significantly to the success, stature and rapid growth of this project following its transfer to Tucson in 1960, exactly seventy-five years after the founding of the University. Before expanding a little on these perhaps somewhat cryptic statements, we need to be aware of the general thrust of astronomical research up to the 1870's. At that time, photography had not attained the stage of perfection or conveni­ ence where it constituted a valuable technique in telescopic observation. This was still the era of visual observation, and not unnaturally, those objects which presented the most detail, or changes of appearance, or which showed motion of rotation or revolution, came under the greater scrutiny. The Sun, Moon, planets and satellites, and comets fall into one or more of these categories. The stars and nebulae, on the other hand, respectively never appear as anything more than points or faint smudges of light, and are, by comparison, quite static. Thus the Solar System objects received the lion's share of attention simply because they provided much more observable and measurable data. This imbalance is reflected in the astronomical literature of the period. In 1882, a bright comet made its appearance in the southern skies. Sir David Gill, Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope Observatory, borrowed a portrait camera from a local photographer, strapped it to the side of one of the telescopes in order to follow the motion of the sky, and made several time exposures of the comet and surrounding sky. He was astonished not only at how well the faintest parts of the comet were portrayed, but even more at the very large number of star images that appeared on the plates. The reason for this success was that he used photographic plates coated with the newly-introduced gelatin-based emulsions rather than the older collodion emulsions which were less sensitive by a factor of 100 or more. This incident initiated the greatest surge of data-gathering in astronomy since the invention of the telescope-the application of these latest photographic products to the study of the stars, star clusters, nebulae, the Milky Way and space in general. A universe of undreamed-of magnitude and complexity was opened up in the process; every direct photograph revealed new objects, every spectrogram displayed unusual features that prompted further research. Photo­ graphs could be examined and measured at leisure, intercompared to detect changes in the positions, brightnesses or appearances of objects, and retained as permanent archival records. By comparison, the advantages gained by the application of these improved photographic products to the study of Solar System bodies were much more modest. Indeed, direct photographs of the Moon and planets still failed to record all the detail that could be detected visually with the same telescopes. It is thus little wonder that research in stellar, galactic and extra-galactic astronomy progressed by leaps and bounds while Solar System studies languished. In fact, the stage was reached where the importance accorded the study of the heavenly bodies was, not counting the Sun, roughly in direct proportion to their distances from the Earth. Our nearest neighbor in space, the Moon, was virtually treated with contempt, and many astronomers roundly cursed its existence (and still do to this day!) because its scattered light hampered the long exposures needed to record faint objects! Enter Gerard P. Kuiper Such was the general climate in astronomy in September 1924, when two freshmen stl!dents in particular presented themselves at Leiden University in the Netherlands. One was the late Gerard P. Kuiper, the other the late Bart J. Bok. Bart Bok recalled that as on that first morning there was